Talk to office workers that are inundated with massive amounts of paper and you will hear a consistent set of challenges. They’re desperately seeking a better way to manage documents. They want to work smarter, not harder. More importantly, they need to unlock the power of information while saving time and money to accelerate business growth.

According to “Winning the Paper Wars,” a study published by Association for Information and Image Management (AIIM), “On an average, respondents feel that driving paper out of the process would improve speed of response to customers, citizens, or staff by a factor of 4x.”

While most office managers know they will benefit from implementing programs to reduce paper, few have developed or executed a plan.

Here are 3 tips to help you gain back control of your information:

1. Assess information types and workloads - Documents come in batches of mixed A4 letters, A3 printouts, images, text, handwritten notes, cards, newspapers, high and low resolution images – the list goes on. The challenge lies in being able to capture all the information regardless of document type, and transferring it into digital formats that make sense.  Instead of having to sieve and sort through piles of mixed document sizes, smarter larger scanner trays are able to detect document size, and automatically recognize and scan document stacks as is. This saves a lot of time that would have otherwise been spent sorting document sizes. The larger trays also allows for faster scanning speeds.

2. Processing heavy-duty desktop scanning with the right tools - Taking things a step further, companies need to reverse the build-up of paper faced by users with heavy-duty desktop scanning needs. The ability to capture the diverse range of information types is critical. The ability to read barcodes on scanned pages is paramount in extracting information that can immediately be channeled directly to applications and databases.  Time is definitely of the essence. The greatest challenge would have to be rescanning documents due to poor image capture quality. With clearer image quality scanners, information is captured more clearly and enables more accurate Optical Character Recognition (OCR). Having additional image correction capabilities like Perfect Page further minimizes the need for rescanning. We have recently launched the new Kodak i2000 series of scanners that promises reliability, excellent media handling, and excellent workflow automation.  With sheer volume of documents that need to be processes, it is important that information management systems are able to handle complex batch scanning requirements and ensure that information is recognized, categorized, and is directed to the right channels. Regaining control of your information starts by simply eliminating the bottleneck and optimizing processes with the right tools.

3. Know your end destination - Scanners these days do more than just scan physical documents, they are a tool that delivers information from paper to organizational database or information management systems. Knowing what information you want to capture and where you want to send it to for storage, processing or, analysis, is important. Once you have that determined, all you need to do is ensure that you have the right processes in place with the right digital solution to allow workflow automation. This reduces paper work and increases productivity.

Gaining back control of the paper in your organization means capturing, sharing and organizing documents for efficient workflow. Once you have a firm grip on this, take things one step further and gain control of your information. Make your information work for you. With the information transferred from paper to digital formats, you can run tests and analysis to discover insights from your information. Insights hold the key to improved business efficiency and growth performance.

Cássio Vaquerois Kodak Alaris Regional Director, Information Management division, for Asia Pacific.